"What’s more worrisome than the actual “shadow inventory” is how banks dispose of it—and whether there are enough buyers willing to purchase the homes when they do. It’s increasingly clear that banks—whether by design or not—aren’t going to foreclose quickly and relist all of these homes for sale. While there were 3.25 million loans that were in the foreclosure process or in default at the end of May, banks owned around 407,000 homes at the end of May, according to estimates from Barclays Capital."